Michelle Bowman, ARC/GNY Assistant Director of Training and Logistics, writes about her historic trip to Israel to work as an MDA Ambulance Responder.

After about a week and a half in Israel, I feel like my Hebrew is completely inadequate. I can manage the simplest transactions, such as buying a bottle of water, but most of the language still sounds like jibberish to me. I made a concentrated attempt to learn Hebrew before I left the United States, but I underestimated the difficulty of learning an entirely new, non-Romance language. Unfortunately, I'm starting to think that this is going to be a problem once we start volunteering.

Before I left I was told that I didn"t really need to worry too much about learning Hebrew. The people who told me this were right—if I was going to be a tourist. I would estimate that 95% of the people in Jerusalem who work in the public sector speak English, most of them very well. However, as early as tomorrow, I am going to be interacting with a local population in their own homes, where people aren’t expected to speak a foreign language. Moreover, I will also be interacting with the other Israelis on the ambulance in a stressful, fast-paced environment where I cannot expect them to switch back and forth between languages. As I look ahead toward my work on an ambulance, I realize that I need to learn some Hebrew. Quickly.

But for now we have one more official day of vacation before we go to meet our coordinator at the Jerusalem Station at 8pm. We decided to spend the day wandering around the Old City, which never ceases to amaze. We saw a few prominent religious sites, again marveling at the fact that so many of the world’s major religions manage to worship in such a small area of land. Being in Jerusalem also makes one have a much better understanding of the history and complexity of Israeli/Palestinian relations.

That conflict seemed to be on everyone’s mind today, as the Palestinian Territories were having their first election in ten years. This election was especially important because Hamas, an organization viewed by the United States and most of Europe as a terrorist organization, was challenging the deeply entrenched Fatah party, which had dominated the Palestinian Territories for over a decade. Although we could not wander into East Jerusalem to see this historic time, we did have a brief brush with the election at lunch, when we stopped at a rooftop restaurant in the middle of the Old City. After enjoying a mediocre lunch of Middle Eastern specialties, including kebab, hummus, and lots of pita, we started talking with our waiter. He told us about the elections and then held up his finger—it was still stained with ink after he had voted that morning. As distant as it may have been, this connection to the election was pretty impressive. We were in the middle of history in the making.

At the end of the day we made our first visit to the MDA Jerusalem station to meet with Mira, our coordinator. At the station, we met up with the four other people from our training session who would be working in Jerusalem. It was good to see them, and we were all ready to go. Mira gave us a whirlwind tour of the MDA station, and told us how we would be scheduled. The system was much more laid back then we imagined—basically, we showed up at 6:30 am, and then we would be assigned to a driver. That was the extent of our instruction. We would start as soon as we could get uniforms, but no earlier than Sunday morning. This was a little bit later than we expected, but it meant that we could leave early for our weekend trip up north. Still unsure of what exactly to expect from work, we left the MDA station and began to make plans for the weekend. We still had at least three days to learn the Hebrew language.